BJP wins eight seats in Jharkhand, Congress faces rout (Third Lead)

Ranchi, May 16 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won eight of Jharkhand’s 14 Lok Sabha seats Saturday as the Congress, facing a rout, managed to retain just one seat. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) won two seats, while two Independent candidates also emerged victorious. The Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik (JVM-P) of former chief minister chief minister Babulal Marandi won one seat.

The key BJP leaders who won were Yashwant Sinha from Hazaribagh, former chief minister Arjun Munda from Jamshedpur and Karia Munda from Khuti constituencies.

The BJP had won only one seat in the 2004 Lok sabha polls and it lost the lone seat in 2006 when party MP Babulal Marandi quit the party.

Independent candidate and former assembly speaker Inder Singh Namdhari, who is supported by the BJP, won from Chatra.

“In Jharkhand, people were fed up with experiments made by the Congress by supporting independent legislator Madhu Koda to rule the state for nearly two years. The misrule witnessed after BJP’s rule in the state frustrated people and people expressed their anger by defeating Congress and JMM combination in the state,” said state BJP president Raghubar Das.

The JMM has won two seats, two less than their share in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. In 2004, the Congress had won six, the JMM four and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) two.

Contesting from Dumka, JMM chief Shibu Soren won the Lok Sabha election by a margin of over 19,000 votes, defeating BJP candidate Sunil Soren. The RJD failed to open its account in Jharkhand this time around.

JVM-P president Babulal Marandi won from Koderma. All the four former chief ministers were in the poll fray and all of them - Shibu Soren (JMM), Marandi (JVM-P), Arjun Munda (BJP)and Madhu Koda (Independent) have won.

Rameshwar Oraon, central minister and Congress candidate from Lohardagga, lost the election.